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Choosing a Class
Choosing a class is one of the most basic decisions a player makes when starting out in EverQuest, or when creating an alt. The purpose of this article is to give some reasons for and against choosing to play particular classes, depending on what the player wants to do in-game. As with anything in EverQuest, individual experiences will vary, but this list is intended to provide some basic information to help the decisionmaking process along. Bard Insert summary. Reasons to Play a Bard *You are an adaptive, creative player who enjoys figuring out clever ways to succeed in difficult situations. *You like a mixture of melee and ranged/magical combat. *You enjoy buffing other players to help your party succeed. *You enjoy pulling and/or crowd control. *You want to run fast. *You like being able to disengage from combat freely. *You want most of your character's power to come from leveling up, with only minmal requirements for equipment upgrades or AA investment. *You want the option of tracking the locations of creatures. *You are interested in boxing and want an easy-to-use utility character for your party. Reasons Not to Play a Bard *You want a consistent, mostly unchanging role when grouping or raiding. (Bards need to adapt their play to their circumstances.) *You dislike pulling or crowd control. (Bards need to do both.) *You want to be effective at healing yourself or other players. (Bards have various regeneration songs, but they lack direct healing capabilities.) *You want to be the main tank for groups on a regular basis. (Although bards wear plate armor and can sometimes fill the role of a tank or offtank, they are not generally regarded as a tanking class.) *You want to deal a high amount of DPS. (Bards excel at helping other players do more damage, but their own damage output is more limited.) Beastlord Reasons to Play a Beastlord *You like a mixture of melee and ranged/magical combat. *You enjoy buffing other players to help your party succeed. *You want to manage a powerful pet that feels like a legitimate member of your party and often gets treated as such, and you don't mind feeling like a lot of your character's potential is tied up in that pet. *You like being able to disengage from combat freely. *You like to punch things! (You feel as though a Monk might be limited in lack of spells, but want a monk feel.) *You want to join together with a pet in combat as a team, rather then stand back and nuke. *You primarily want to DPS, but don't mind sacrificing just a bit of it for a massive amount of toys and utility. *You like buffs/debuffs, and being a support, or small fallback healer or tank *You like the flavor of animals, beasts, and clawing your way to victory, and becoming a werewolf Reasons Not to Play a Beastlord *You don't like pets, or you feel like a pet is more of a weight reducing your freedom of gameplay. *You want to be a main healer or main tank *You prefer specialization rather then massive utility or being a jack of all trades *You hate animals. Berserker Insert summary. Reasons to Play a Berserker *You want to deal heavy melee damage and prefer two-handed weaponry. *You want to get in your opponents' faces and not feel restricted by your positioning. *You like the idea of a powerful melee fighter whose savage warcries can inspire other melee fighters to greater offensive performance. *You want your ranged weapon attacks to feel useful throughout your progression through the game, even though they are still decidedly inferior to striking in melee when you are able. *When adventuring alone, you prefer methodical gameplay in which you take time to equip yourself well, bring along a cleric merc, size up your opponents appropriately before committing to battle, and then use every tool at your disposal to make sure they die and you don't. *You are comfortable with having extreme offensive potential that can be only be kept at its peak for a limited period of time and are comfortable with making decisions for yourself about when and how to unleash that potential (solo and some group situations) or listening to your party's leaders and unleashing that potential on their command (more organized group play and most raid play). *You are comfortable with managing how much your opponents hate you compared to the party's tank. *You are comfortable with continuing to fight in melee while under self-inflicted status ailments that come as side-effects of the abilities you use to maximize your DPS. These ailments include effects like blindness and root. *You tried a wizard but wished you could have similar mechanics in the form of a melee fighter. *You and one or more friends are creating a regular playgroup of melee fighters and want to maximize its damage output. *You want to have an option for swarm killing foes as a way to grind AA points rapidly. Reasons Not to Play a Berserker. *You want to be the main tank for groups on a regular basis. (Consider a warrior instead. High-level berserkers are relatively squishy among melee fighters and have some abilities that damage themselves. Although berserkers are sturdy enough to tank some foes long enough to kill them, tanking is not their strength.) *You enjoy dealing heavy melee damage, but you want to be good at exploring hostile areas freely without fighting. (Consider a rogue instead.) *You enjoy dealing melee damage, but you want to be able to freely disengage from fights on a regular basis, capable of emergency self-healing, and sturdier in fights overall. (Consider a monk instead.) *You find melee combat annoying or unwieldy but still want to play a character that specializes in dealing heavy bursts of damage. (Consider a wizard instead.) *You want to play a burst damage dealer but don't want to feel heavily dependent on your equipment (especially your weapon) in order to perform well. (Consider a wizard instead.) Cleric Insert summary. Druid Insert summary. Reasons to Play a Druid. *You want to heal other players when grouping or raiding but also want the option of dealing significant DPS with spells when a situation allows for it. *You like the idea of providing thorny damage shields that harm foes who attack you or your companions. *You want to be able to transport yourself or other players around the game world using your magic. *You enjoy taking time out from adventuring to interact with newbies and other lower-level players, healing them and buffing them and generally being friendly. *You want to excel at powerleveling low-level players. *You want the option of tracking the locations of creatures. *You tried a ranger and found yourself more interested in the spells than in the melee or the archery, and wished the spells were stronger. Reasons Not to Play a Druid *You dislike being expected to heal or offheal other players when grouping or raiding. *You want your combat decisions (regarding which spells and abilities to use, and when to use them) to be straightforward. *You want your role to be consistently defined as either healing or as DPSing and dislike switching from one to the other on the fly. *You want to engage in melee combat and have your attacks feel dangerous and meaningful. (Consider a ranger instead.) Enchanter Insert summary. Reasons to Play an Enchanter. *You want to become an undisputed master of bringing order and safety to chaotic and dangerous places *You have a good ability to assess and track danger. *You enjoy crowd control and other forms of of reactive gameplay but don't necessarily enjoy (or want to be responsible for) healing. *You want to help your party achieve its peak offensive performance while crippling the offense of your foes. *You enjoy turning foes against each other. *You are comfortable with managing pets but prefer for your pets to be expendable, situational tools that need not be used in every encounter. *You believe that a spellcaster's prearations are never complete without an arsenal of protective enchantments that can shield the spellcaster from harm in a pinch: better safe than sorry! *You tried other spellcasters, constantly want more mana regen, and want to share that extra regen with other players too. *You are interested in boxing and are looking for a highly reliable crowd control and buffing class that doesn't require a great deal of your attention. Reasons Not to Play an Enchanter *You like spellcasting characters but want to deal lots of damage personally, instead of depending on your teammates using your buffs to deal greater damage. (Consider a wizard or necromancer instead.) *You like spellcasting characters but want a powerful pet to be consistently available to you. (Consider a magician or necromancer instead, or possibly a beastlord if you also enjoy melee combat.) *You are strongly interested in crowd control, buffing, and debuffing, but you want to be in the thick of combat instead of casting on the sidelines. (Consider a bard instead.) *You are mildly interested in crowd control but are more interested in healing yourself or others (consider a cleric, druid, or shaman instead). *You prefer to manage foes by getting in their faces and beating them up. (Consider a warrior, paladin, or shadow knight instead, as all of those tanking classes are adept at keeping mobs busy by doing precisely that.) Magician Insert summary. Reasons to Play a Magician *You want to manage a powerful pet that feels like a legitimate member of your party and often gets treated as such, and you don't mind feeling like a lot of your character's potential is tied up in that pet. *You want to have interesting choices to make about what kind of pet should accompany you in each situation you face. *You like the idea of being protected by your pet while you blast enemies from a distance. *You like the idea of a character who prepares a lot before fighting, commits to fights once they start, and makes use of all of those preparations in order to perform optimally and achieve victory. *You like the idea of fiery shields that harm enemies who strike you, your pet, or your other party members. *You like the idea of playing a hunter of summoned creatures who employs other summoned creatures to help the process along. *You like the idea of summoning items that are useful to yourself and to other players. *You want most of your power to come from leveling up and from investing AA points, without being dependent on keeping all of your equipment fully up to date. *You want to play a class whose AA options allow for interesting choices in specialization without being too scattered or confusing. *You are interested in boxing and are looking for an effective tank that doesn't require a lot of your attention, and you don't intend on using melee DPS characters in your boxed group. Reasons Not to Play a Magician *You are easily frustrated when trying to control pets in EverQuest. (Do note, however, that it gets easier at later levels with Pet Discipline and Advanced Pet Discipline.) *You are easily frustrated at redoing a long list of preparations after each failed attempt at a fight. *You like adventuring on-the-fly with minimal preparation, even in challenging/dangerous areas. (Consider a necromancer instead.) *You like being able to disengage from fights at will. *You find it hard to stay aware of your surroundings in-game and tend to get jumped by adds frequently. *You are frustrated at being squishy without having tools for healing yourself. (Consider a necromancer instead.) *You want the option of fighting alongside your pet in melee and having your attacks deal meaningful damage. (Consider a beastlord instead.) Monk Insert summary. Necromancer Insert summary. Paladin Insert summary. Ranger Insert summary. Reasons to Play a Ranger *You like a mixture of melee and ranged/magical combat. *You want to shoot a bow and deal effective damage with it. *You want to have the option of offtanking during emergencies. *You want to be able to assist with healing yourself or other players in a pinch. *You want the option of tracking the locations of creatures. (Rangers have the best capability of doing this among the three classes that can.) Keep in mind if it's a very large zone a Ranger cannot track the entire zone but if they know the general location it should be able to be found. *You want the option of farming lower level creatures with great speed. (See Headshot.) *You tried a druid and liked the overall spell selection but wanted to be more tanky, more capable at fighting in melee, and generally a little less spell-dependent. *You want to have an option for swarm killing weak foes as a way to grind AA points rapidly. Or known as DoT spells (Damage Over Time) *You are interested in boxing and want a ranged attacker for your party who requires minimal attention while providing a lot of utility. Reasons Not to Play a Ranger *You want to be able to serve as the main healer when grouping. (Consider a druid instead. Rangers do not do well in this role, although they can provide a considerable amount of situational offhealing.) *You want to serve as the main tank when grouping in challenging content. (Rangers take hits better than many other classes and do have a taunt button and some strong situational defensive abilities, but they have difficulties with reliably enduring damage in challenging content.) *You want your decisions in combat (whether to fight in melee or at range, and which spells to cast and when to cast them) to be straightforward. *You want your AA investment decisions to be straightforward. (Figuring out which AA lines are optimal to invest in for increasing your DPS can require a considerable amount of thinking about your playstyle, looking up data online, and doing math using that data.) *You are not using a Gold Membership and want a class that plays well even with minimal AA investment. *You have a low tolerance for hearing random jokes made about your class. (Ranger jokes are an entrenched meme in the EverQuest community.) *Always having have the best armor when tanking and having high HP and good Augs is a must if your going to be the main tank in a group. * Rogue Insert summary. Shadow Knight Insert summary. Shaman Insert summary. Warrior Insert summary. Wizard Insert summary. Reasons to Play a Wizard *You like seeing big damage numbers and enjoy being the one who dealt them. *You like making magical explosions. *You want your spell and ability decisions during combat to be straightforward, with those decisions usually being reducible to a simple flowchart of priorities. *You want to be able to transport yourself or other players around the game world using your magic. *You are interested in boxing and are looking for a strong damage dealer who doesn't require too much of your attention to use decently. Reasons Not to Play a Wizard *You want the option of healing yourself or other players during battle. (Consider a necromancer or a druid instead.) *You find it very difficult or annoying to manage how much enemies hate you when playing in a group or raid setting.